Some shoppers do their research on the products that they desire to purchase before they head to the stores. A number of websites are available to provide comparative pricing information on a large variety of products for such purposes. Once the shoppers obtain the desired pricing information, they may then head to the stores that offer the best pricing to make the purchases.
There is often a lag time between when the pricing research is performed and when the actual purchase takes place, especially where the purchase is to be completed physically at a store. For example, based on his/her research, a shopper may find out that a specific store offers the best price for a particular product, which is only available physically at that store. The shopper, however, may not have time to visit that store immediately. At a later time, the shopper may nonetheless continue to rely on the pricing information that s/he has obtained earlier, because the shopper may either forget or choose not to do farther research. As a result, the pricing information may not be the most recent and the shopper may miss out on certain savings opportunities.
In other situations, shoppers may decide to make purchases on a spontaneous basis when they are visiting the stores. When shopping at a store, comparative shopping of product prices is difficult to do in real-time.
Some stores have advertised lowest price guarantees where a purchaser may return a purchased item to the store for a refund or obtain a price difference rebate if the purchaser is able to find a better advertised price for the same item elsewhere. Even with such price guarantees, the purchaser would still have to deal with the inconvenience of returning the purchased item or claiming the rebate.
Hence, it would be desirable to provide methods and systems for providing reverse online auctions and mobile commerce using mobile devices.